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Exploring Creativity with Ursula K. Le GuinAn interview with Ursula K. Le Guin by TVAP (The Video Access Project) / The Creative Outlet, Inc.
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Sun, 10 Mar 2019 01:54:39 GMTbook:author=ursula k. le guinsci-fiscience fictioncreativityKim Stanley Robinson: Valuing the Earth and Future Generations: Imagining Post-CapitalismClimate change and population growth will combine in the twenty-first century to put an enormous load on humanity's bio-infrastructural support system, the planet Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson argues that our current economic system undervalues both the environment and future human generations, and it will have to change if we hope to succeed in dealing with the enormous challenges facing us. Science is the most powerful conceptual system we have for dealing with the world, and we are certain to be using science to design and guide our response to the various crises now bearing down on us. A more scientific economics -- what would that look like? And what else in our policy, habits, and values will have to change?
Winner of Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards, Kim Stanley Robinson is best known for his award-winning Mars trilogy. He has published fifteen novels and several short stories collections, often exploring ecological and sociological themes. Recently, the US National Science Foundation has sent Robinson to Antarctica as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. In April 2011, Robinson presented his observations on the cyclical nature of capitalism at the Rethinking Capitalism conference, University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1984, he published his doctoral dissertation, The N...
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Sun, 10 Mar 2019 01:54:13 GMTbook:author=kim stanley robinsonsci-fiscience fictionclimate changeenvironmentfutureOffworld: How Would Space Politics Work?Once humans start colonizing other planets, how will politics work between Earth and those who live offworld? Ariel is joined by author Annalee Newitz and linguist Nick Farmer--who works on the show the Expanse--to discuss science fiction's portrayal of realistic space politics!
https://www.tested.com/science/space/867975-offworld-how-would-space-politics-work/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/525961https://huffduffer.com/adactio/525961
Sat, 2 Mar 2019 08:48:14 GMTpolitics book:author=annalee newitzscience fictionspacesci-fibook:author=ariel waldmanoffworldI Think You're Interesting - Why 2001: A Space Odyssey is still one of the greatest films ever made, 50 years later | Listen via Stitcher Radio On DemandEven if you haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s mind-melting 1968 science fiction epic, you probably know at least something about it. It’s one of those movies, like Star Wars or Citizen Kane, that has become so thoroughly dissolved into our pop culture that you’ll have heard of the villainous computer HAL or know the famed music cue (Richard Strauss' “Also sprach Zarathustra”) that plays over its most indelible images.
But how were those moments created? The story of 2001 is the story of an almost obsessive attention to detail, of a budget that almost completely destroyed the film’s studio, of an initial wave of terrible reviews that might have killed a lesser movie. At every step of the way along its production process (and even after its release), 2001 is a fascinating example of big-time moviemaking gone right.This week, Todd is joined first by Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson to talk about 2001’s long legacy, then by author Michael Benson, whose book Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece is the definitive account of the making of the film, to talk about how this titanic achievement came to be.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/i-think-youre-interesting/e/54242528https://huffduffer.com/adactio/522053https://huffduffer.com/adactio/522053
Tue, 29 Jan 2019 23:49:20 GMTfilm:title=2001a spaceodysseysci-fiscience fictionBruce Sterling at The Interval at Long Now | San FranciscoBruce Sterling at The Interval: The future is a kind of history that hasn’t happened yet. The past is a kind of future that has already happened.
The present moment vanishes before it can be described. Language, a human invention, lacks the power to fully adhere to reality.
We live in a very short now and here, since the flow of events in spacetime is mostly closed to human comprehension. But we have to say something about the future, since we have to live there. So what can we say? Being “futuristic” is a problem in metaphysics; it’s about getting language to adhere to an unknowable reality. But the futuristic quickly becomes old-fashioned, so how can the news stay news?
Bruce Sterling is a futurist, journalist, science-fiction author, and culture critic. He is the author of more than 20 books including ground-breaking science ficiton and non-fiction about hackers, design and the future. He was the editor in 01986 of Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986) which brought the cyberpunk science fiction sub-genre to a much wider audience. He previous spoke for Long Now about "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" in 02004. His Beyond the Beyond blog on Wired.com is now in its 15th year. His most recent book is Pirate Utopia.
https://theinterval.org/salon-talks/02018/oct/16/how-be-futuristic-bruce-sterlinghttps://huffduffer.com/adactio/518567https://huffduffer.com/adactio/518567
Thu, 3 Jan 2019 23:27:47 GMTbook:author=bruce sterlingscifiscience fictionauthorsfuturelong nowtalkslong-term thinkinglecturesfthe intervalsan franciscoeventideastimelongnowThe Incomparable | Overture and Apes (Episode 431)Pick up a femur, order a moon sandwich, and always remember to bring your space helmet with you! On its 50th anniversary, we’re discussing Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey.” What is the Monolith’s purpose? When and why does HAL become murderous? And why is there so much solarized stock footage of landscapes? Watch out for cheetahs!
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Fri, 9 Nov 2018 18:33:18 GMTfilm:title=2001a spaceodysseysci-fiscience fictionAliens Would Probably Like It If You Gave them Flowers | WIREDThey might find beauty in the same things humans do, you never know.
Alien invasion is a constant theme of Hollywood science fiction, from War of the Worlds to Independence Day. But Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, author of the new book Enlightenment Now, argues that highly developed civilizations tend toward peace and tolerance, and that advanced aliens are much more likely to be friendly.
“I think it’s not inconceivable that wars between countries will go the way of slave auctions and dueling, just be seen as too ridiculous for any reasonable country to engage in,” Pinker says in Episode 296 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And maybe that’s the natural arc of civilizations, including ones on other planets.”
But wouldn’t alien brains be so different from ours that it would make mutual understanding impossible? On the contrary, since aliens would have been subject to the same evolutionary pressures as us, they would probably possess an appreciation of science—and maybe even beauty—similar to ours.
“It’s conceivable that other intelligences have a sense of beauty that is not wildly different from ours,” Pinker says, “because they too might be expected to be attuned to counter-entropic forces and patterns in nature.”
An example of this is our appreciation of the bright colors and symmetrical configuration of many flowers. “Flowers are designed to attract bugs,” Pinker says, “but they also attract us, and our brains are pretty different from bugs’ brains.”
But there are limits. Vast differences in culture and biology would definitely lead to some significant differences when it comes to art appreciation.
“It may be pushing things to say that little green men from Alpha Centauri would groove to Thelonious Monk,” Pinker says. “I don’t think I’d push it that far.”
Listen to the complete interview with Steven Pinker in Episode 296 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Steven Pinker on progress:
“Nowadays in the most conservative part of the world, namely the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in many ways they are as liberal, even a bit more liberal, than people of the same age in, say, Sweden or Norway in the early 1960s. At first when I saw that graph I just couldn’t believe it, what are you talking about? People in Libya today are more liberal than people in Sweden in the early sixties? But if you actually think about it, if you go back to people’s attitudes in the sixties, the idea of say gay marriage—you ask a Swede in 1960 what they thought of gay marriage, they’d think you were nuts. Or women’s equality. We tend to underestimate how much the world has changed, particularly when it comes to generation by generation turnover.”
Steven Pinker on AI:
“If Elon Musk was really serious about the AI threat he’d stop building those self-driving cars, which are the first kind of advanced AI that we’re going to see. Now I don’t think he stays up at night worrying that someone is going to program into a Tesla ‘take me to the airport the quickest way possible,’ and the car is just going to make a beeline across sidewalks and parks, mowing people down and uprooting trees, because that’s the way the Tesla interprets the command ‘take me by the quickest route possible.’ That’s just idiotic, you wouldn’t build a car that way, because that isn’t an example of artificial intelligence — plus he’d get sued and there’d be reputational harms. You’d test the living daylights out of it before you let it on the streets.”
Steven Pinker on science fiction:
“If you take Moral Philosophy 101, or even better you dive into the technical literature in moral philosophy in the philosophy journals, it’s kind of all science fiction. It’s ‘what would happen if …?’ I mean, it’s not very good science fiction, as literature, but it’s putting together an imaginary world and exploring the consequences, to see what you really deep down believe. A simple example is the trolley problem—you know, imagine there’s a hurtling trolley and if it continues on its way it’ll kill five workers on the track who don’t see it coming, but if you flip the switch it’ll be diverted and kill only one person. Should you flip the switch? And all kinds of variations that start to go into the realm of science fiction. But it’s these stretches of the imagination that clarify what you really believe. So science fiction and moral philosophy are often pretty similar.”
Steven Pinker on academia:
“Just yesterday I got a slew of letters after I published an article in the Wall Street Journal just mentioning climate change, and a lot of the readers wrote back and said, ‘Don’t tell me you believe in climate change. That just comes out of universities and everyone knows that there’s just a left-wing echo chamber in the universities.’ Now that’s total and utter nonsense, I know these people—the climate scientists and planetary scientists and geophysicists, and they are not left-wing fanatics—but when you’ve got the university culture developing a reputation for orthodoxy and suppression of controversy, which is true in some parts of the university, it taints the university system as a whole, to the detriment of the entire society.”
https://www.wired.com/2018/02/geeks-guide-steven-pinker/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/495343https://huffduffer.com/adactio/495343
Sun, 5 Aug 2018 19:57:45 GMTbook:author=steven pinkerprogresssci-fiscience fictionpsychologyastobiologycultureChristopher Nolan Calls Stanley Kubrick the Greatest Filmmaker | IndieWireYou may love "2001," but you probably don't love it as much as he does.
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/christopher-nolan-stanley-kubrick-2001-a-space-odyssey-1201968793/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/485178https://huffduffer.com/adactio/485178
Mon, 4 Jun 2018 17:32:44 GMTfilm:title= 2001a space odysseychristopher nolanstanley kubricksci-fiscience fictionBBC Radio 4 - The Film Programme, 2001: A Space Odyssey SpecialFrancine Stock explores the hidden wonders of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a special edition.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pvdhkhttps://huffduffer.com/adactio/485177https://huffduffer.com/adactio/485177
Mon, 4 Jun 2018 17:31:59 GMTfilm:title=2001a spaceodysseysci-fiscience fictionfor:hanaThe Incomparable | Sometimes You Need a Wookiee (Episode 408)Fresh from the movie theaters, here’s our flash review of “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” In a world where there’s a new “Star Wars” movie every year, sometimes it’s a relief not to have the fate of the galaxy at stake. What are the rules of Sabacc? Are references the lowest form of fan service? Will casual fans be more enthusiastic than hard-core ones? Why watch droids fighting for entertainment when you have holograms? From train heists to floating space yachts to surprise cameos, we break it all down.
https://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/408/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/484122https://huffduffer.com/adactio/484122
Mon, 28 May 2018 19:37:27 GMTfilm:title=solostar warsmoviesci-fiscience fictionincomparable“2001: A Space Odyssey”: What It Means, and How It Was Made | The New YorkerFifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke set out to make a new kind of sci-fi. How does their future look now that it’s the past?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/23/2001-a-space-odyssey-what-it-means-and-how-it-was-madehttps://huffduffer.com/adactio/472850https://huffduffer.com/adactio/472850
Sat, 21 Apr 2018 21:51:36 GMTfilm:director=stanley kubrickbook:author=arthur c. clarkefilm:title=2001: a space odysseysci-fiscience fictionfutureCan science fiction predict our economic future? Companies take a deep dive into the stacks of a sci-fi library to find out how we might react to new tech.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/04/12/business/can-science-fiction-predict-futurehttps://huffduffer.com/adactio/471479https://huffduffer.com/adactio/471479
Sat, 14 Apr 2018 23:16:30 GMTsci-fiscience fictionpredictionfuturelibrarytechnologyBBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Series 26, Philip K DickMichael Sheen champions Philip K Dick who has had an influence on his production of Hamlet
Actor Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon; The Queen; Midnight in Paris) explores the life of Philip K. Dick with Matthew Parris, and explains why he had such a big influence on his recent production of Hamlet.
Michael first discovered Philip K. Dick through the film Bladerunner, and moved onto his short stories which got him thinking about science-fiction in a new way. Whilst reading about philosophy, quantum physics, and comparative mythology, it struck him how Dick was intuitively weaving narratives around all the most interesting elements that these fields were throwing up.
He talks about Philip K. Dick's innate interest in multiples realities, and how they overlap with Sheen's own family experiences of mental health issues. In fact the more he found out about him, the more he was drawn to this enigmatic writer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017wyychttps://huffduffer.com/adactio/462173https://huffduffer.com/adactio/462173
Sun, 25 Feb 2018 17:13:33 GMTbook:author=philip k. dicksci-fiscience fictionEpisode 95: Blade Runner 2049 with Denis Villeneuve and Rian JohnsonDirector Denis Villeneuve discusses his new film, Blade Runner 2049, with fellow Director Rian Johnson. Picking up thirty years after the events of Ridley Scott's classic Blade Runner, the film follows K, an LAPD officer, who discovers a long-buried secret that could plunge what is left of society into chaos.
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Sun, 4 Feb 2018 10:36:32 GMTfilm:director=denis villeneuvefilm:title=blade runner 2049sci-fiscience fictioncinemaUrsula Le Guin & Margaret Atwood - Literary ArtsUrsula Le Guin begins her lecture with Margaret Atwood by saying, “I emailed Margaret about six weeks or so ago and said, ‘What are we going to talk about?’ and she replied, ‘I expect we will talk about 1) What is fiction?; 2) What is science fiction?; 3) The ones who walk away from Omelas—where do they go?; 4) Is the human race doomed?; 5) Anything else that strikes our fancy.’” The two women proceed to examine these questions and talk through their answers. They delve into their writing processes and motives, creating many humorous analogies for the act of writing, whether they connect it to naked chickens, salted slugs, or dark boudoirs.
Margaret Atwood is a poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and environmental activist. She has written over 40 books and is best known for her fiction, including The Blind Assassin, which won the Man-Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood has used her public profile to advocate for human rights, the environment, and the welfare of writers. She has been president of PEN International and helped found the Writer’s Trust of Canada. As a public intellectual, Atwood is known as a brilliant thinker on a huge range of subjects who has a wry and ironic sense of humor and who is willing to call out platitudes and other forms of lazy thinking.
Ursula K. Le Guin sold her first story over 50 years ago and has been writing and publishing ever since. Tackling various modes, including realistic fiction, science fiction, high fantasy, children’s literature, screenplays, and essays, her work has challenged traditional understandings of gender roles, politics, race, and identity. She is best known for her fantasy series Earthsea and her science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness. She has influenced several generations of writers, including Junot Díaz, Kelly Link, David Mitchell, and Jonathan Lethem. Throughout her career, she has continuously met criticism with courage, causing one critic to note, “It’s been hard for reviewers to cope with Le Guin. She’s often seemed like a writer without a critical context. But that may just mean that the context is still to come.” Among her many honors, Le Guin has received a National Book Award and, most recently, The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
If we knew everything ahead of time, we wouldn’t write the book. It would be paint by numbers and there wouldn’t be any discoveries.” – Margaret Atwood
“Rereading a book is much better than reading it. A good book reread is better than a good book read.” – Ursula Le Guin
“All doors are doors to the future, if you go into them.” – Margaret Atwood
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Sat, 3 Feb 2018 21:36:13 GMTbook:author=margaret atwoodbook:author=ursula k. le guinliteraturewritingsci-fiscience fictioniwdLiving in a Sci-fi World: Author Kim Stanley RobinsonChapters:
0:47 How do you choose date and time?
5:14 We live in a science fiction world
9:25 Who's creating the future, the scientists and engineers, or the sci-fi writers?
11:22 The philosophical battle between science and capitalism
16:07 How does one go about creating the future on paper?
25:10 Is science becoming too much like a religion?
29:24 Fiction is the steady instrument, science is what evolves
33:00 Audience Question: On which planet or astroid or community from your novels would you most want to live?
35:55 KSR reads from 2312
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Fri, 19 Jan 2018 11:55:55 GMTbook:author=kim stanley robinsonsci-fiscience fictionEpisode 6: Designing the FutureHow do you design the future? Today we talk with cyberpunk founder and design theorist Bruce Sterling and feminist/activist writer Jasmina Tešanović about speculative design, design fictions, open source hardware, the maker movement, and the soft robots of our domestic future. Plus we go behind the scenes of the creation of a design fiction by Bruce, Jasmina, Sheldon Brown, and the Clarke Center—a video installation called My Elegant Robot Freedom.
http://imagination.ucsd.edu/_wp/podcast/episode-6-designing-the-future/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/453558https://huffduffer.com/adactio/453558
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 20:51:48 GMTbook:author=bruce sterlingjasmina tešanovićdesign fictionspeculative designfuturesci-fiscience fictionopen sourcemakerrobotsEpisode 8: Fantastica, with George R.R. Martin and Kim Stanley RobinsonScience fiction and fantasy have gone from the sidelines to the mainstream. We bring you a live conversation between two of the field's living legends, George R.R. Martin (“A Song of Ice and Fire,” adapted for television as Game of Thrones, the Wild Card series) and Kim Stanley Robinson (New York 2140, the Mars trilogy), discussing their careers, the history of fantastic literature, and how it shapes our imagination. They came to the Clarke Center in support of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop (clarion.ucsd.edu), the premiere training and proving ground for emerging writers, which the Clarke Center organizes each summer with the Clarion Foundation.
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Sat, 13 Jan 2018 20:50:30 GMTbook:author=kim stanley robinsonbook:author=george r.r. martinsci-fiscience fictionfantasywritingliteratureStar Wars: The Last Jedi with Rian Johnson and Spike Jonze (Ep. 123) — The Director's Cut - A DGA PodcastDirector Rian Johnson discusses his new film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with fellow Director Spike Jonze. As the eight installment of the blockbuster franchise, the film continues the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as Rey develops her Force abilities with a reluctant Luke Skywalker while Finn, General Leia Organa and the resistance continue their battle against Kylo Ren and the First Order.
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Sat, 13 Jan 2018 10:55:44 GMTstar warsfilm:title=the last jedisci-fiscience fictiondirectorsfilm:director=rian johnsonfilm:director=spike jonze‘The Last Jedi’ Is the Most Intellectual ‘Star Wars’ Movie | WIREDRian Johnson's movie has more moral complexity than any of the previous films—and gives audiences a lot more to think about.
https://www.wired.com/2017/12/geeks-guide-last-jedi/https://huffduffer.com/adactio/452896https://huffduffer.com/adactio/452896
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 19:38:02 GMTstar warsfilm:title=the last jedisci-fiscience fiction